Legislation

Two new European Directives in the UK – Directive 2013/29/EU which harmonises the obligations of economic operators and Directive 2014/58/EU which introduces new requirements to improve the traceability of pyrotechnic articles.

If you wish to make comments the closing date of this consultation is Thursday 22nd January 2015. There is a short summary below.

Christine Knox – Assistant Director

What is this consultation about?

The consultation is about how the UK implements two new EU Directives on pyrotechnic articles – which include fireworks.

As the Directives have already been made, we can’t influence their contents. But we do want to get the views of stakeholders on how we are implementing those Directives. We have set out a number of specific questions on which we are asking for responses.

We plan to get rid of the old pyrotechnic regulations (Pyrotechnic Articles (Safety) Regulations 2010) and replace them with a new set of regulations. A draft of the new regulations is in the consultation document.

Who will be interested in it?

This consultation will be relevant to:

manufacturers, importers and distributors of pyrotechnic articles;
bodies involved in the conformity assessment of pyrotechnic articles (currently there are no such bodies in the UK); and enforcement authorities with responsibilities for pyrotechnic articles such as trading standards and the Health and Safety Executive

What are the main changes?

There will be new labelling requirements for manufacturers and importers and, along with distributors, they will also have to keep records of the registration number of articles, who they have sold pyrotechnic articles to and who has supplied them, for 10 years. They will also have new obligations to take action over unsafe articles that they have put on the market.

Following the introduction of the Explosives Regulations 2014 EIG has produced a series of Brief Guides to assist members of the explosives industry. These brief guides are not intended to replace the HSE sub-sector guides to ER2014 but to point users where to find more information. The guides are subject to review and users should ensure they have an up to date copy from this website.

The Explosives Regulations 2014 (ER2014) came into force on 1st October 2014. They replace many old explosive specific Regulations (including MSER and COER) and although the layout of the Regulations has changed significantly, the general content of them remain the same.

This consultative document seeks views on proposed new regulations, titled ‘The Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations 2015’ to implement all but the land use planning aspects and Article 30, ‘Heavy Fuel Oils’ of Council Directive 2012/18/EU (Seveso III Directive) on the control of major-accident hazards involving dangerous substances. Article 30 has already been implemented in Great Britain via a consequential amendment to the COMAH Regulations 1999, this change will be incorporated into the COMAH Regulations 2015.